r/technology • u/chrisdh79 • Feb 03 '23

Netflix says strict new password sharing rules were posted in error Business

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/03/netflix-says-strict-new-password-sharing-rules-were-posted-in-error
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u/DiscombobulatedElk93 Feb 03 '23

We travel full time in an rv for work, we don’t have a “home” Wi-Fi. We’re between 4-5 states all year and use hot spot and park Wi-Fi. We won’t be able to use Netflix anymore.

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u/kirlie Feb 03 '23

This would be the case for alot of retirees. I live in South Texas, Winter Texans are here for about 4-5 months out of the year. I could see this causing alot of issues for them.

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u/DiscombobulatedElk93 Feb 03 '23

We just haven’t found a reliable actual hotspot, so we use our phones when we can’t use park Wi-Fi but I’m not sure phone hotspots count. But people with starlink or such might be ok. But at this point Netflix isn’t worth it we share with family and I can even remember when the last time I watched it was besides Wednesday. So I’m not really upset if we all cancel. Between friends and fam we have access to every other one, we all just pay for one and share.

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u/stephruvy Feb 03 '23

Nah you'll just need 2 accounts now for ~~ twice the fun~~ the exact same thing

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u/Throwawayaccount_047 Feb 03 '23

Netflix is built into every Tesla out there too. How the fuck did they plan to reconcile with that? Am I supposed to send them an email a week before I go for a drive?

Fuck Netflix. I will cancel at the end of the month now regardless of what they do.

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u/cookiesarenomnom Feb 03 '23

My parents are snowbirds, they live in Florida for the winter. They were very pissed about this yesterday.

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u/gpg2556 Feb 03 '23

Not on Netflix side but their now ~deleted~ FAQ said that if the primary user was traveling, he/she would be able to approve their device for use for 7 days outside their wifi.

They did not say if you were able to apply for another code once those 7 days end.

Pretty shitty practice. My fam pays for 4 simultaneous streams, netflix should give a shit where we watch it

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u/DiscombobulatedElk93 Feb 04 '23

Yeah doubtful that we’d be able to that every week and also inconvenient for something we pay for. So stupid not worth it anymore

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u/aliveinjoburg2 Feb 03 '23

IIRC if you applied for the 7 days again, you’d be banned.

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u/Devium92 Feb 04 '23

Don't worry, just call this Customer Service line to get a one time use code to allow you to use it not at your "home WIFI" location. But you'll have to sit in "Hold Hell" for about 2 hours, longer than whatever thing you wanted to actually watch, so now you've wasted all that time for nothing, and you didn't even get to watch the show/movie you wanted!

1

u/pieter1234569 Feb 04 '23

You would be asked to…..enter a 4 digit code every week.

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u/DiscombobulatedElk93 Feb 04 '23

Someone else said you cannot do the code weeks in a row

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u/pieter1234569 Feb 04 '23

But that wouldn’t make any sense at all. This approach already works fantastically well.

The point is to make sharing a hassle. If everybody needs to text you every week then at first you may forward it, but after a while you will get sick of it. At the same time, it’s also annoying to have to wait when you just want to watch something.

So it annoys paying customers into not sharing and it annoys leeching people from not asking, as they don’t want to wait.

Now you could always share the login information to an e-mail account, but that’s also doing work. Extra work. The best solution would be using a phone number though. You can’t bypass it, and for the primary user there is no difference.

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u/DiscombobulatedElk93 Feb 04 '23

But is this what they said they are doing or just what they should do?